Stuff

Two new voting intention polls today. The first by Survation for Good Morning Britain had topline figures of CON 48%(+1), LAB 30%(nc), LDEM 8%(+1), UKIP 4%(nc). Clearly there is no substantial change since their poll a week ago. Fieldwork was conducted on Friday and Saturday, after the leak of the Labour manifesto, and doesn’t show any sign of any impact.

The second was the weekly ICM poll for the Guardian. Topline figures there are CON 48%(-1), LAB 28%(+1), LDEM 10%(+1), UKIP 6%(nc). As many have noted, ICM are now are, along with TNS, one of only two pollsters still showing Labour support below thirty points (MORI last poll did the same, but that was several weeks ago when everyone showed Labour that low). It’s not that ICM haven’t shown Labour support rising a little. ICM have been showing Labour recovering slightly, it’s just they’ve been doing so at a slightly lower figures: at the start of the campaign ICM had Labour at 25-26% and they now have them at 27%-28%.

This seems to be a consistent methodological difference. The methodological differences between pollsters are complicated and various, and some of them work in opposite directions (ICM, for example, also reallocate don’t knows in a way that helps Labour) but the most obvious one at the moment is probably the approach to turnout. Traditionally British pollsters have accounted for people’s likelihood to vote by getting respondents to estimate their own likelihood to vote – put crudely, they ask people to say how likely they are to vote on a scale of 0 to 10, and then either weight them accordingly (someone who says they are 8/10 likely to vote is only counted as 8/10ths of someone who says 10/10), or apply a cut off, ignoring people who rate their chances below 5/10 or 9/10 or 10/10. Since 2015 several companies, including YouGov and Ipsos MORI, have also factored in whether people say they have voted in the past, weighting down past non-voters.

ICM and ComRes have adopted new approaches. Rather than basing their turnout model on people’s self-reported likelihood to vote, they base it on their demographics – estimating respondent’s likelihood to vote based on their age and social grade – the assumption being that younger people and working class people will remain less likely than older, more middle class people to vote. This tends to have the effect of making the results substantially more Conservative, less Labour, meaning that ICM and ComRes tend to produce some of the biggest Tory leads.

What are the chances that Tory turnout will be quite low on account of many Tory leaning voters believing it to be in the bag and thus giving Labour an unexpected boost (providing their turnout is high)?

I’m not quite sure I follow the ICM and Comres demographic weighting. We have been led to believe that working class Brexit voters are super motivated to vote Tory in the GE. How would down weighting such voters harm Labour VI?

RAF – I expect it’s more to do with age. The ABC1 vs C2DE divide has faded a bit (though if the matrix breaks it down to AB, C1, C2, DE then DE is still more Labour than other social grades). Young people however are still much more likely to vote Labour than older people.

More to the point, the effect is clear to read from the tables: before turnout weighting it would be CON 45%, LAB 31%. The turnout model then pushes it up to CON 49%, LAB 27%. Finally reallocating don’t knows drags it back to CON 48%, LAB 28%.

Thanks for the explanation of the 8/10th weighting of a vote. Wow, that seems pretty dodgy to me, the cut-off sounds more reasonable, but just a gut feeling. I know from filling in 0-10 type surveys (and seeing the results of others) that I’d put little trust in those values. A scale of 1-5 is just about all the human brain can handle! Translating as “No”, “Probably no”, “Maybe”, “Probably Yes” and “Yes”.

So if adjustments weren’t made the result would be a 4% Tory lead. Maybe the turnout models are wrong & the before weighting figures correct. Everyone is assuming Tory landslide when we could be in touching distance of hung parliament.

I’m interested in that YG regional analysis. As with the Ashcroft poll, the number of respondents in each region was large enough to apply weighting by “regional” demographics.

Was this done – or should we continue to follow Anthony’s advice (even if YG do something very different!) and ignore regional crossbreaks, because the selection of respondents in the various regions is arbitrary, as long as they add up correctly for the (somewhat imaginary) GB polity?

Anthony, regarding the likelihood to vote weighting or cut-off, is any analysis done after an election, to see whether weighting or cut-off tallies more closely to the actual result? And also where the cut-off should come?

Peter – I would think that the only place that turnout will be low is in seats won with a large majority in 2015. I am completely torn in my seat which is now a marginal – I had considered lending my MP my vote as I do not want her to lose her seat but am not sure if I can bring myself to vote for Marxists :)

Peter – I would think that the only place that turnout will be low is in seats won with a large majority in 2015. I am completely torn in my seat which is now a marginal – I had considered lending my MP my vote as I do not want her to lose her seat but am not sure if I can bring myself to vote for Marxists :)

If the current polls were reflected in the final result it would mean the two main parties between them capturing a significantly larger share of the vote than at recent elections.

In 2015, they received a total of 69%. The now polls suggest a joint share of almost 80%.

You have to go back to 1992 to find an election where the total Conservative and Labour share was close to that – the figure was 78%. The last time it was above 80% was 1979.

If the Tories beat 43.9%, it will be the highest percentage they have received since 1970 and if they beat 46.4%, it will be the highest percentage they have received in any General Election since 1959.

Couper means 14% of course which is a simple typo not misreading.
4% would not be touching distance of hung parliament but comfortably in that range.

I am hoping the lead can stay below 15% or a 4% swing to limit the damage.

London may well be smaller swing and Scotland bigger perhaps negating the statistical impact so the rest of E&W.
would be close to the UNS figure.

Labour vote loses in Scotland can only cost one seat, although the Tories may gain some from SNP, while any lower swing in London means more holds. With a tad of incumbency and a little tactical voting in marginals from LDs and Greens I am going for Labour holding 10-15 more than seats UNS projects across GB. Still Cons majority 75-100 and they may well get 5 or so more seats in Scotland

I was, and am, a remainer but I accept that that boat has sailed. For me, the best hope of a benign brexit is a stonking Conservative majority which relieves the pressure on Mrs May to pander to any particular wing of the party. For once, I see the lack of effective opposition as a good thing and I dare say many others will too. In 2022 it will probably be business as usual and manifestos may be important, but until then, there is really only one overriding issue.

I have the same question as the redoubtable OLDNAT at 10.27pm who writes:

“As with the Ashcroft poll, the number of respondents in each region was large enough to apply weighting by “regional” demographics.
Was this done – or should we continue to follow Anthony’s advice (even if YG do something very different!) and ignore regional crossbreaks, because the selection of respondents in the various regions is arbitrary, as long as they add up correctly for the (somewhat imaginary) GB polity?”

COUPER2802s assertion of a ‘Hung Parliament’ based on this raw data is preposterous.

There’s no point in speculating about what would happen if the raw data is right, and all the adjustments are wrong. Scientific analysis tells us that the raw data HAS to be adjusted,

He might as well say that perhaps next time an apple becomes detached from a tree it will fall up instead of down.

These pollsters don’t make it up as they go along. Polls are remarkably accurate. Even the ones famed in recent years for being wrong are not remotely as wrong as the margin of error required to turn this data into a ‘Hung Parliament’.

Furthermore these polls are broadly in line with where you would expect them to be, compared with the Local Election and Metropolitan Mayoral results.

If COUPER2802 seriously believes a Hung Parliament is a likely outcome, he should go to one of the spread betting firms, bet on it at the odds of 20 to 1 available, and get rich.

“The two main parties are expected to spend well over £1m between them during the 2017 general election by exploiting Facebook’s ability to target specific voter groups with tailored messaging.

The rise of Facebook, which now has some 32m accounts in the UK, has empowered campaigners to experiment with video, beyond the strict limits of the traditional televised party election broadcasts. The ability to splice together TV footage and post it to Facebook streams within hours of an event is bringing to Britain elements of the “attack ad” culture previously more prevalent in the US.

In contrast with billboards or TV broadcasts, such campaigning has hitherto been hard to track because of its semi-private nature. Who Targets Me is asking voters to sign up and become part of a nationwide project to map the phenomenon. So far over 4,000 volunteers have signed up across nearly 600 constituencies.”

…

Labour has said it will match the Conservatives on social media spending this year. Robert Blackie, a digital campaign expert who has previously advised the Liberal Democrats, has estimated spending rates on Facebook in this election could already be running at around £140,000 a week. At the last election, Labour only spent £160,000 on social media advertising compared with £1.2m by the Conservatives, according to the Electoral Commission.

…

“Labour is using an in-house system called Promote to target different adverts at different voter groups. It was trialled on Sadiq Khan’s mayoral campaign.

“It is open to local campaign teams so for example if they are vying for a seat served by Southern rail, they can target voters with our message about bringing the railways back into public ownership,” said a Labour source. He added Labour has so far tested 1,200 different iterations of Facebook adverts on voters.

The Liberal Democrats appear to have been more prolific than both of the main parties so far in producing adverts through Facebook with 44 different adverts already tracked by Who Targets Me.”

…

“However, there is yet to be any clear evidence of the kind of microtargetting of individual voters based on sophisticated psychometric profiling of Facebook users, of the kind claimed by companies like Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Leave.EU Brexit campaign.”

In the same way that John Buchan is a long time Tory supporter, though the P&J expose of his online activities may have made his support somewhat embarrassing.

My point, however, was just that the assumptions about Leave/Remain, Yes/No, the CFP etc aren’t as simplistic as many have assumed.

There are complex arguments and counter arguments around the various constitutional issues.

Will it be “a struggle” for Robertson in Moray? I imagine so.

However, SCon need to take a significant number of former SNP votes to unseat him, and it isn’t clear that sufficient in the coastal communities have greater trust in May’s government to protect their interests.

They are (rather vainly) hoping to push the whole issue into the far distant future. Saying that they would “consider” a federal UK, if their Convention came up with that concept, is meaningless verbiage.

It’s a classic example of why Labour is increasingly irrelevant in Scottish politics.

Dis NOP ask the Govanites for their views of the SCon, SLib, or SNP MPs?

I was in SLab at that time, because how else could you realistically hope to provide some limited protection against a Tory Government?

The SNP described SLab MPs as the “Feeble Fifty”, but in reality, they couldn’t do any more in a UK Parliament than the SNP’s 56 can do – or the Irish Nationalists could do in their day – even if the SLab MPs had tried harder than they did..

A protest vote for Sillars in the by election made sense, but so did voting SLab in 1992, in the hope that England would vote Labour.

There are useful pointers from 30 years ago, but I’m not sure that they are useful in describing the demise of 21st century SLab.

When asked how they will vote in their constituency
44% Tory, 42% Labour

WOW…

And the Labour on the ground campaign seems to be far better than the Tories. Are the Tories assuming they have won these seats and they have moved onto higher targets, or are they just slow to get going?

Interesting – but my question about YG’s regional analysis is even stronger in this scenario.

Have the responses been demographically weighted to those constituencies listed, or is it just the collation of the random responses from those who happen to have been selected by YG in those constituencies?

I don’t expect any answer from Anthony btw!

Whether he professionally agrees with these analyses or not, they are good commercial promotions by YG, and a sensible employee would keep his mouth firmly shut.

If only certain Tory candidates would do the same! ie in Wells (which is not to suggest that Anthony has any similarity to that odious individual standing there!) :-)

This forum seems to indicate that from door knocking the possibility of a high Tory turnout and low Labour turnout. There doesn’t seem to be a Corbyn factor in the polling turnout models!

Labour had a really good week, Lots of populist policies, no big gaffs, decent on the Sunday shows ( not that anyone other than us political geeks and party activists actually watch them). The Tory’s survived a major securitry attack on the NHS. That is a pretty major event on two very key policy areas and they seem to have been unscathed… amazing!

Labour’s costings will be pulled apart even if they make a little sense, then in a few days the Tory’s will release a left wing manifesto parrying some of labour’s policies.

Then with 1-2 weeks to go negative stories about Corbyne will start to reduce the Labour turnout even more. I don’t think these will be direct , it will certainly not come out of TM’s mouth. The press will start with the old stuff, then a few news stories then on election week there will be some massive new story. It might not even be true, but it will work.

Even now the Torys are favourite to take Hudersfield, Sedgefield!!, Stockton North. Stockton North is 105 on the Conservative target list! I also think there are still some decent odds in constituencies where there is no Labour incumbant.

OLD NAT.
Good morning to you Headmaster, emeritus. Just before I go to school, and I have not been ‘eased out’ yet, in year 39 of the work in the classroom (DG), i point out that your case of the Syrian minister has been repeated many times, so that leading ministers from different denominations have been denied entry into UK when they travelled for conferences and ordinations.
Off to work now